or nearly twenty years, Margaret remained true to the
pledges of this note. In a few years we were separated, but our
friendship remained firm. Living in different parts of the
country, occupied with different thoughts and duties, making other
friends,--sometimes not seeing nor hearing from each other for
months,--we never met without my feeling that she was ready to be
interested in all my thoughts, to love those whom I loved, to watch
my progress, to rebuke my faults and follies, to encourage within me
every generous and pure aspiration, to demand of me, always, the best
that I could be or do, and to be satisfied with no mediocrity, no
conformity to any low standard.

And what she thus was to me, she was to many others. Inexhaustible
in power of insight, and with a good-will "broad as ether," she could
enter into the needs, and sympathize with the various excellences, of
the greatest variety of characters. One thing only she demanded of
all her friends,--that they should have some "extraordinary generous
seeking,"[C] that they should not be satisfied with the common routine
of life,--that they should aspire to something higher, better, holier,
than they had now attained. Where this element of aspiration existed,
she demanded no originality of intellect, no greatness of soul. If
these were found, well; but she could love, tenderly and truly, where
they were not. But for a worldly character, however gifted, she felt
and expressed something very like contempt. At this period, she had
no patience with self-satisfied mediocrity. She afterwards learned
patience and unlearned contempt; but at the time of which I write,
she seemed, and was to the multitude, a haughty and supercilious
person,--while to those whom she loved, she was all the more gentle,
tender and true.

Margaret possessed, in a greater degree than any person I ever knew,
the power of so magnetizing others, when she wished, by the power of
her mind, that they would lay open to her all the secrets of their
nature. She had an infinite curiosity to know individuals,--not the
vulgar curiosity which seeks to find out the circumstances of their
outward lives, but that which longs to understand the inward springs
of thought and action in their souls. This desire and power both
rested on a profound conviction of her mind in the individuality of
every human being. A human being, according to her faith, was not
the result of the presence and stamp of outward circumstan